Could Labour come fourth on 4 June?

The campaign proper has begun, and I am canvassing from garden to scented garden in Wokingham with some delightful Conservative Future dudes. As far as affecting the result goes, such activity is, to a single approximation, valueless. One of the small but irritating ways in which Tony Blair aligned our constitutional processes with Europe's was his replacement of single-member constituencies with monstrous Euro-regions. If I wanted to canvass everyone in my South East England division, it would take me 35,000 years.

Not that the voters see it that way, of course. "Why haven't you ever been round before?" asks one elderly chap. I do my best to explain that it's a very large patch, covering 84 Westminster constituencies, and that I can't get round everyone personally. This seems to satisfy him so, pushing my luck, I ask whether he might, you know, vote for me. "Oh, I don't know yet. You're the only candidate I've seen. I'll have to wait for the others first."

So, if it won't alter the outcome of the election, why bother with all this door-knocking? Two reasons. First, Kantian imperative. Second, because canvassing a representative sample of your constituents serves as a kind of massive rolling focus group. It tells you what people are thinking. And what they're thinking now, at least in Berkshire, is "How do we get rid of that morose, cack-handed, wastrel, incompetent, incontinent, gurning oaf in Downing Street?" I know I said much the same last year. But I was right.

After the canvassing, I join three other Conservative Euro-candidates for a public meeting in Wokingham town hall, chaired by John Redwood, perhaps the most intellectually accomplished and principled man in the House of Commons. All of them – Nirj Deva, Therese Coffey and Sarah Richardson – impress the audience, which contains a large and, in the circumstances, exceptionally well-mannered UKIP contingent. My analysis? In the Home Counties, at least, Labour is slogging it out with the Greens for fifth place.